A few years ago, Web Watch wrote about how ARTIFICIAL VANILLA CONTAINS COAL TAR.
It ends up that there are many different artificial food products that contain ingredients that we may or may not know about.
Take, for example, the simple cinnamon stick.
Did you know that there really are three different products that are commonly sold as “cinnamon sticks”?
Did you know that only one of them is actually really considered “cinnamon”?
It’s true – there are four types of cinnamon that you may find at your local market:
- “true” cinnamon, taken from the bark of the Cinnamomum verum tree. Often called “ceylon”
- Indonesian cinnamon
- Cassia, or Chinese cinnamon
- Saigon / Vietnamese cinnamon
Now each of these all have similar flavors and uses – some bakers find baking is best with the Chinese cinnamon, while cinnamon used in coffee is often the Indonesian variety.
The point of all this is that not all things labelled “cinnamon” is the real deal. Europe actually requires proper labelling on anything originating from cassia rather than the true Cinnamomum source.
But we digress.
The point is that fake food science has come so far that scientists have developed a fake cinnamon that was so close the the real deal “true” taste, that food tasters (that would be folks like us) not only CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE, but actually prefer eating the fake stuff!
In other words, paying the extra money for the highest quality ingredients is a waste of your time, money, and energy when the artificial flavors will work just as well.